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Nick Bostrom

By: Edward Gheorghita

Nick Bostrom is a well known Swedish philosopher who has many publications regarding the ethics of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Dr. Bostrom’s primary interest involves drawing attention to the possibilities of artificial intelligence becoming smarter than humans and eventually taking over the world. However outlandish this idea may seem, his arguments have turned many heads including those of Elon Musk and Bill Gates. [3] Throughout his career and 200+ publications, he has made it explicitly clear that we cannot ignore this possibility of Artificial Intelligence overtaking humanity.

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Nick Bostrom had an educational upbringing that might seem uncharacteristic for one who has a Doctoral degree in philosophy, and a Masters degree in each of the following; physics, philosophy, and computational neuroscience. As a high-schooler, he strongly disliked the idea of school and started to “homeschool” himself everything he needed to know in order to get into an undergraduate program while performing stand up comedy routines as a side job.  During his career as a college student, Nick Bostrom became thoroughly interested in the ethics revolving around Artificial Intelligence. Because of his strong background in philosophy, his ideas were well received by many. Nick Bostrom had a major concern with superintelligence, meaning the possibility of machines to learn at an exponential rate, too fast for humans to keep track, and for them to wipe out humanity. Nick Bostrom said, “adverse outcomes would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential.” [2]

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A handful of people ignored Nick Bostrom’s precautions, and most of them were workers of

the field of Artificial Intelligence. They claim that this idea of computers overtaking humanity is an idea that is so far ahead of our time, it isn’t even worth thinking about. One commented, “the reason I don’t worry about AI taking over the world is the same reason I don’t worry about the overpopulation on Mars.” [3] Nick Bostrom, on the other hand, argues that the exponential growth rate of machine learning could happen much more quickly than we might anticipate. He firmly believes that there are many options that we can pursue that can avoid this catastrophe and that it is never too late to get started. [1]

 

Source: nickbostrom.com

References

[1] Elvidge, Jim. Nick Bostrom Biography, www.theuniversesolved.com/theuniversesolved/bio-nick-bostrom.htm.

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[2] “Home.” Famous Philosophers, www.famousphilosophers.org/nick-bostrom/.

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[3] Khatchadourian, Raffi, and Raffi Khatchadourian. “The Doomsday Invention.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 7 Sept. 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom.

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[4] “Nick Bostrom.” Edge.org, 1 Jan. 1970, www.edge.org/memberbio/nick_bostrom.

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